10 PR commandments and how to use it for Personal Branding (1-3)

Steve Rubel has come up with 10 commandments for public relations professionals. I was thinking of how to use those commandments in the work of personal branding, so I have written some comments to each of the commandments. Here are comments on the first three commandments.

1) Thou shall listen – Utilize every avenue available to you to listen actively to what your publics have to say and feed it back to the right parties.

How do you handle the feedback you get from people around you? For starters, begin with writing down the positive and negative feedback you get. Then look at it and see how it matches the way you want to be seen. Maybe the negative feedback is in line with what you want to communicate and maybe you are getting positive feedback that communicates something you don’t want to be associated with.
When people starts talking about you in a way that matches the personal brand you want to achieve you have laid the foundation of your personal brand.

2) Remember that all creatures great and small are holy – It doesn’t matter if it’s the New York Times calling on you or an individual blogger, both have power. Take them all seriously.

Word of mouth is a powerful tool, and works in both directions. With the right approach you can build your brand by stating your principle to people that does not agree with you, no matter if it is your neighbourhood or the head of the company you want to work at. With the wrong approach however, even upsetting your neighbour can have devastating consequences if he/she talks about you to the wrong person.

This does not only apply to your customer, it applies to all things in life. I have covered one aspect of this in the earlier post about brokeback entrepreneurs, simply meaning that if you get help from others, be generous and repay the favour. This way you will build you brand and the respect for your person. There are many ways of creating win-win situation with your customers/friends/colleagues, be creative and find the ways that suites the situation.